A Little Literary Musing

Ah, it's been an exhausting Saturday. After driving nearly all the way to Bedford for my little cousin's birthday party we stopped by Lowe's on the way home for some supplies and spent the rest of the day moving couches, painting and wallpapering. Bethany and I put the last piece on the wall sometime after midnight.

So this morning we slept in, got some much needed laundry underway and put the kitchen back in as much order as we can with cement floors. At the moment there are potatoes baking in my oven. One of the highlights of yesterday for me was stopping at the Paperback Exchange on Williamson Road, which rarely fails to having something I want to read. I walked out with O'Brian's Post Captain, and though I wanted the next three in that series I settled on The Lando Calrissian Adventures, A King's Trade and The Dwarves. I'm discovering lately that I'm really enjoying historical fiction, particularly anything in the era of the Revolutionary War and naval adventures of the Napoleonic Wars. C.S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower introduced me to the adventures of the British Navy during the war and O'Brien continues to have me hooked, though to date I still prefer Forester's series. I've even delved into a little alternate history with the Temeraire series.

Fantasy as a genre is not losing it's appeal, but it's not drawing me in as it once did. There are some authors and worlds I follow closely, but lately my mind is bending more toward the historical with a dash of Star Wars and Star Trek thrown in. Beginning with the New Jedi Order, the Star Wars novels are amazingly dramatic and unpredictable and the current series, Fate of the Jedi, is living up to its predecessors. The Star Trek world has been revolutionized a bit in that the novels are picking up exactly where the TV shows and movies left off and taking them in entirely new, deeper directions. They tend to come out at a bit slower pace than the Star Wars books, but there is one or two novels in every series out at least every month. I'm building a stockpile of unread Trek against the day the mood hits me and I can settle in by the fire with some hot chocolate for a voyage to a strange new world.

In all this mess, my fall reading has continued to grow ever deeper. I have even rediscovered my love of used bookstores. For a long time, starting sometime during my college career, I wanted the books in my library to be all new and in pristine condition. And while I still do my best to keep them in good shape, I've rediscovered the love of used books at half price that allow me to get twice the bang for my buck. After all, books should be cherished and loved, regardless of the condition. I once had a copy of Jurassic Park that was so well read that I could tell you what page numbers were bent. I had a copy of The Hunt For Red October that fit my hands perfectly and I read until it fell apart. So instead of a new and pristine library full of hardbacks, I'm going to build it into a library stocked full of well worn and well loved stories that are as familiar as old friends. After all, I cry every time I read Flint's death in Dragons of Spring Dawning. My library needs to reflect those moments a little better.

So...yea...the picture I posted before all this literary rambling. It was taken Friday and it's of Roaring Run Creek. As a matter of fact this is the last picture I took before packing it because, to get it, I had to wade out into the creek and set my tripod up. It's an eleven minute exposure, which is ridiculously long, especially when you're standing calf-deep in cold water. The long exposure time was due to an almost closed canopy above me and a sun that was determined to hide behind what cloud cover there was as along as possible. There was abundant light to see by, but we all know cameras need more light than most of us realize.

Well it's at least two hours before dinner and I think I shall clean the ol' library a bit and see what Jack Aubrey, Master and Commander in His Majesty's Royal Navy, is doing to bedevil Napoleon's navy.